


Winter, New York City

by unicornpoe



Series: Stucky Bingo 2019 Fills [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, CapSeptender, First Kiss, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Sick Steve Rogers, Tenderness, Worried Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: Between the rough sheets stretched rumpled across the bed, two boys curl like a set of parentheses around each other and their breaths mingle arhythmically in that dark place behind Bucky’s eyelids. It’s still night until he looks; it’s still night, and he doesn’t have to move.But then: a shift, Steve’s head rolling a little where it rests on Bucky’s chest, soft-fine hair rasping against Bucky’s collar bone. A quiet, wet cough.And Bucky opens his eyes.





	Winter, New York City

**Author's Note:**

> This is an entirely self-indulgent bucket of pining, gooey, fluffy feels. for context: I listened to "I will follow you into the dark" on repeat while I was writing, and you can tell. ENJOY.
> 
> Fulfills the square “sharing clothes” on my Stucky Bingo card

They don’t have an alarm clock and there is no sun, but Bucky wakes up anyway. 

He doesn’t open his eyes. Between the rough sheets stretched rumpled across the bed, two boys curl like a set of parentheses around each other and their breaths mingle arhythmically in that dark place behind Bucky’s eyelids. It’s still night until he looks; it’s still night, and he doesn’t have to move. 

But then: a shift, Steve’s head rolling a little where it rests on Bucky’s chest, soft-fine hair rasping against Bucky’s collar bone. A quiet, wet cough. 

And Bucky opens his eyes. 

Steve is still asleep, clingy and limp when Bucky shifts away far enough to look down at him. His brow is furrowed even in rest, and he’s a bundle of sharp angles, of razor-edged lines—the only soft things about him are the sunrise-spread of his eyelashes over his cheekbones; the messy tangle of his hair; that place where his lips are parted slightly, open to draw breath, and the place is pink and moist. He coughs again, his brow contracts. Bucky frowns. 

“Wake up, pal,” he says quietly. He touches the hollow of Steve’s cheek with just the tip of his index finger, strokes down along the edge of Steve’s jaw with a touch that’s too light to wake him. He hates to wake Steve up this early, especially after a night like last night— 

Last night: Steve coughing so hard that he’d fallen down right there in the kitchen, one hand against the linoleum, one hand scrabbling at the skinny bones caging his shitty heart. Bucky sat with him, pulled him up and propped Steve in the V of his legs, rubbed the last of their vapor rub over his chest and prayed until his lips felt bloody with it. 

Steve fell asleep fast last night, a rare occurrence. Bucky had stretched out beside him and watched the rise and fall of his ribs even though he knew he shouldn’t and then, when it got dark enough that he couldn’t see anything more than a sliver of Steve’s face in the blackness, he’d tucked his face into the pillow by the top of Steve’s head and he’d cried himself to sleep. 

There are things Bucky Barnes wants to say, things that eat him up from the inside out. He won’t ever say them. 

—but Steve gets sore at him when Bucky lets him sleep in while Bucky heads off to the docks, and even though Bucky knows that Steve’s more angry at his body than at any one person, Bucky lets it go. You’ve got to pick your battles with Steve Rogers. This isn’t a hill that Bucky’s willing to die on. 

So, “Stevie,” he murmurs, nudging Steve’s shoulder a little with the palm of his hand. Steve’s paper-thin eyelids flicker fast, and Bucky imagines he can see the vibrant blue of his eyelids through that pale skin. “It’s morning.” 

Steve’s hands, woven as they are into the fabric of Bucky’s undershirt, contract once before he lets go. He blinks blearily up at Bucky a few times, pupils wide and unfocused. He’s wearing one of Bucky’s nightshirts, and he swims in it. 

“Hey there,” Bucky says. He can feel the way he’s smiling—too small, too soft, too goddamn in love—but he can’t quit it. Steve’s eyesight is probably too bad to see him looking like a fool, anyway. Bucky reaches out and rests the back of his wrist against Steve’s forehead, gut shifting nervously when he feels that tell-tale burn against his skin. “How you feeling?”

“Fine,” Steve mumbles, and that’s all Bucky needs to hear to know it’s a bold-faced lie. If Steve were fine, he’d be complaining about the earlier hour, whining at Bucky, slinging his legs over the side of the mattress and hissing through his teeth at the bitter cold floors. Not blinking slowly up at Bucky, looking like a goddamn angel, his gaze groggy and wide, soft-focused, gaunt cheeks pink with fever. 

But there’s nothing Bucky can do. He knows that, even though he hates it. “Ok,” he says. He turns his hand over, trails his fingers across Steve’s hairline for half a second. Steve’s lips are still parted slightly; his fever-bright eyes watch Bucky’s hand fall to the mattress beside him. 

Bucky gets out of bed, getting dressed as fast as he can with stiff fingers. He was right. The floor is frigid. “Hungry?” he asks over his shoulder. 

Steve’s head turns on the pillow as he follows Bucky with his gaze. “Not right now, Buck,” he says, low and solemn and pleasant as anything. Bucky might be fooled, if not for those shadows under Steve’s eyes, black enough that they look like bits of night sky. Bucky might be fooled, if not for the jagged hitch to his breath, the way Steve’s skin is so pale that Bucky can almost see right through him and to the bed below. 

Sliding on another pair of socks over the ones he’s wearing already, Bucky swallows the burn of awful tears in his throat and tries to smile at Steve. “How ‘bout I make you something, just in case?” he asks. He comes over to the bed where Steve still has not moved, bending down so he isn’t looming over his friend. 

Steve nods seriously. “Sure, Bucky,” he murmurs. “That’d be nice.”

Bucky should get up, should go to the bathroom, should fix his hair, because he’s got work in thirty minutes and it takes fifteen to get there. Instead, he sits on the edge of the bed, rolling the hem of the blanket between two fingers and watching Steve breathe. 

“I think,” he says slowly, because he’s gotta play this carefully or it could all come crashing down around his head, “I think maybe you shouldn’t go to work today, Stevie.”

For a minute, he thinks Steve’s gonna—gonna yell, gonna cry. Gonna get up and rage at something that he has no control over. Bucky wants him to; if Steve does that, then he’s ok, and Bucky won’t feel like something’s slowly crushing him into the ground. 

But Steve doesn’t. He frowns, but barely. He’s breathing fast, like he can’t catch any air. “Yeah,” he says, nodding a tiny nod. His eyelids are so heavy, bruised with the exhaustion of keeping his heart pumping and his lungs contracting. “Alright. But I still gotta finish that advertisement for Mr. Blakely.”

The window ad for the grocery store on the corner. It’s the best money Steve’s gotten drawing in a while, and it’s due tomorrow. 

“Light’s better in the living room,” Steve says. He sits up so, so slowly, and every bit of Bucky aches to lean forward and help again, but he knows Steve doesn’t want him to. He just hovers, hands ready to catch him, while Steve struggles to straighten his spine, and then he can’t help himself from curling his fingers around Steve’s boney shoulders and holding him up when his gasps get too loud and his arms start to shake. 

“Ok, ok, ok,” Bucky says, inane, unhelpful. He’s just on the edge of hysterical: this is the first time Steve’s been really, truly bad since Sarah died, and Bucky almost can’t speak past the fear lodged in his throat. Steve feels so delicate in his hands. 

There’s no way he’ll be able to walk to the living room on his own. Bucky needs to get him there without acting like he thinks Steve too weak, he needs… 

“The floor’s so cold, Stevie,” he says, talking too fast. He’s still holding Steve. Might never let go. “Why don’t you stand on my feet and I’ll walk you over, like when we were little?”

The look Steve shoots him is laced with something dryly amused, even though he’s so tired, but Bucky is entirely earnest. Steve catches that. He softens. 

“Fine,” he says again. Bucky slips out of bed. 

He gets Steve’s sweater first—and that’s Bucky’s, too, that big ugly brown thing that his ma knit him but that belongs wholly to Steve now—watching as Steve struggles to get his arms and his head through. Then Steve moves slowly, shifting until he’s on the edge of the mattress, legs dangling down over the side. 

He looks up at Bucky. Big blue eyes, too glazed, too dark. He holds up his arms as Bucky walks forward, and Bucky aches. 

“C’mon,” he says, quiet, so quiet, like the sound of his voice will break something if he isn’t. He curls his fingers over the fragile ridge of Steve’s hip bones, swallowing tightly when Steve hooks one frigid palm over the back of Bucky’s neck and one over his shoulder, and shuffles forward until Steve can place his socked feet over Bucky’s and stand. 

“This is…” Steve starts, but doesn’t finish. Stupid, he was probably going to say, silly, pointless, unecessary. A perfunctory argument. Bucky’s glad he shut up. 

“Hold on, Stevie,” Bucky says, lips brushing the top of Steve’s tilted-down head. 

Steve’s grip tightens a little once they start moving, his hands both moving to Bucky’s shoulders, his head lifting up fast. He meets Bucky’s eyes, and Bucky smiles at him, moving in a stilted shuffle from their bedroom to the living room. He’s holding Steve gently enough that he won’t hurt him, but tight enough that it’s clear there’s no way he’d let Steve fall, and after a second of Steve’s gaze darting around Bucky’s face with intent, he smiles slightly, too. 

He drops his head to rest against Bucky’s neck before Bucky can study that smile too close, but that’s ok. The image exists like a snapshot in Bucky’s mind, lined up there with every other smile Steve Rogers has sent his way. Bucky’s a fool, but at least he has something nice to look at when he closes his eyes. 

Bucky doesn’t feel any strain at all as he transports Steve; his muscles don’t get tired, his grip doesn’t go slack. Steve’s lighter than anything Bucky spends his days at the docks hefting around; Steve’s light enough that sometimes, when it’s windy out and Steve’s walking too far from Bucky’s side, Bucky has to shove his own fists into his coat pockets to keep from reaching out and tethering him to the ground, just so he won’t float away. 

Steve is a dandelion clock, a creature made of bird-bones and feathers; he’s got a heart and a temperament made of something molten hot and heavy, and a body too brittle by half to carry all that. 

It isn’t fair. 

“Down you go, punk,” says Bucky, but he’s sure the soft way his hands are touching Steve as he helps lower him down onto the couch completely counteracts the gruff tone he’s going for. He doesn’t want Steve to feel like he’s being babied or underestimated—but he wants even less to stop treating him like he’s anything other than the best thing in the world. Bucky’s hands skim Steve’s narrow ribs, and Steve’s touch lingers on Bucky’s skin long after his hands are folded in his slight lap, and Bucky’s skin is flushed and shivery like he’s the one with the fever. 

“Thanks, Buck,” says Steve. His eyes: two bruised cornflower petals, two pieces of sea glass, too dull and too shiny at the same time. His mouth: so pink and cracked against the backdrop of his pallor, and Bucky wants to press his thumb into the scoop of his top lip, Bucky wants to throw himself right down at Steve’s feet, to rest his cheek against Steve’s stomach and to hold him tight, tight, tight enough that nothing will ever take him away. Not illness, not fighting, not death. This is one mine, he thinks, with the kind of bright fierceness that he terrifies himself with sometimes, feeling the words hum through every inch of his body even though he doesn’t know who—or what—he’s even talking to. This is one is mine, and I’m his. So stay back. 

Steve circles Bucky’s wrist with cold, dry fingers, looking up at him in concern. “Bucky?” he asks, his brow furrowed. “Alright?”

Bucky passes his hand over Steve’s on his wrist, loosening his grip and setting Steve’s hand back down in his lap as he straightens. “I’m ok, pal,” he says. He gets Steve’s sketchbook and pencil case off of the side table, setting it onto the cushion by Steve’s thigh, and then steps away before he can do something crazy. 

Steve watches him walk into the kitchen. The wait of his gaze is heavy. 

They’ve got two eggs left, so Bucky scrambles those up and toasts a few pieces of bread, separating everything onto two plates. He gives Steve more, just because he’s used to it; he gives Steve more, even though he knows he won’t eat more than a few bites. It’s just habit by now, an action as ingrained in Bucky as brushing his teeth, or following Steve into back-alley battles. It’s a reflex. 

He eats as he gets ready for work, casting glances at the top of Steve’s golden head over the back of the couch as he does so. Bucky gathers the threadbare quilt off their bed and fills a cup with water for Steve on his way back into the living room, but by the time he comes around the side of the couch— 

By the time he comes around the side of the couch Steve is asleep, his head tucked into the corner, his thin arms wrapped tight around his steepled knees. His chest is still hitching with every other breath, and his brow is deeply creased, and. And. 

And, oh, Bucky can’t help himself when he leans forward and smoothes Steve’s brow with the pad of his thumb, whisper-soft, Steve’s skin burning like the surface of the sun. Steve feels devastatingly hot yet, but he’s shivering slightly—delicate tremors—so Bucky nudges his sketchbook out of the way and drapes the quilt around his tiny form, tucking it in around every edge and corner until he’s as warm and safe as Bucky can possibly make him. 

Bucky feels cowardly. Boneless. I’d do anything, he thinks, a desperate half-thought. He hates to leave him here, but if he doesn’t go to work, they’ll have no money to buy Steve’s next round of medicine with. It’s a terrible cycle, and Bucky wants to rip something apart. 

He leaves a note for Steve, tucked in the pages of his sketchbook with enough sticking out the top so he’ll see it: 

Steve,  
I’m asking Mrs. Lawrence from next door to come over halfway through the day to make sure you’re punk ass is still breathing. Don’t be rude to her. Remember to drink water. Eat your eggs. Move at least two times. Don’t worry about making me something to eat tonight, I’ll take care of it when I get home. Don’t worry about the advertisement, I’ll sock Blakely in the jaw if he gets bent out of shape about it being late. Rest.  
Hope you feel better,  
Bucky

It’s raining when he leaves. 

***

Steve is sleeping on the couch when Bucky gets home—dripping wet from the storm outside, shivering, hungry, exhausted—lying horizontal now, the blanket pooled around his slender waist, one hand pillowing his cheek, and Bucky’s heart throbs when he sees him. 

Bucky drips onto the floor as he slips out of his coat and puts away his hat and shoes, and he shivers violently as he heads into the golden light of the living room, but he hardly notices. Because Steve looks so peaceful, curled up like he is: he’s still breathing unevenly, and he is still milky pale, his veins standing out blue at his temples and the delicate turn of his wrists, but his brow his smooth and he isn’t frowning, as he so often is. 

Bucky loves him so much that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

He steps closer into the room, his feet whispering against the still-cold floor. Steve blinks awake, looking up at Bucky with clear eyes. He smiles, soft and weary. 

And Bucky can’t speak. He gets quietly to his knees next to Steve, reaching out and brushing Steve’s bang back from his pale forehead, and watches Steve shiver while he does so. It’s not a fever-induced reaction; that molten flush is gone from his skin, and Bucky sags into the cushions in relief. 

Steve’s hand slips back around Bucky’s wrist, its rightful place. He blinks, long and slow. Bucky’s lips part, he makes a little noise; Steve is ok, Steve’s fever has burned out of him and it didn’t leave char in its wake, Steve is alive and whole and his. 

“Buck,” says Steve. He shifts closer to the edge of the couch, still weak, but more alert than he looked this morning. That faint, worn smile still lingers about the cracked corners of his lips, the glint of his eye. His voice is a mess, ruined and scraping, dry. 

And still, Bucky can’t summon any words. He’s too tired, he’s too drained; he’s too full of this feeling of you, you, you as he looks at his friend, and the clench of his heart is tight, like there’s a fist wrapped around the organ that will never let go. 

Something in Steve’s eyes shifts. Understanding, illumination: he softens. “Honey…”

It’s still raining outside, a torrent that slams against their windows with the sound of pennies hitting the bottom of a wishing well, and inside, Bucky Barnes presses his eyes shut tight. 

Steve’s hair whispers across the cushions. He squeezes Bucky’s wrist just the slightest bit more, and then he fits his lips to the seam of Bucky’s, and Bucky makes a sound like a sob. 

The angle is bad; one of them is vertical and one horizontal, and Steve has to strain his neck to reach Bucky’s lips, and still Bucky’s whole spine seems to shift with the shivers that run through him, and every inch of his flesh flashes hot, then cold, then hot again. I’m the one who’s asleep, he thinks, even as he draws up a palm and curves it tenderly over the bony protrubance of Steve’s shoulder. I’m the one who’s dreaming. 

But when Steve pulls back, the warm, dry, chapped skin of his lips rubs rough against Bucky’s—a perfect texture, a mind-numbing drag and scratch. Bucky couldn’t make that up. 

Steve’s breathing heavy into the silence between them, and it’s that and only that which forces Bucky to open his eyes. 

He sets a hand over the heaving part of Steve’s chest, snaking it right under the dragging collar of Steve’s—Bucky’s—sweater, fingertips stroking the ridge of Steve’s collar bone. Steve’s heart is thundering, beating like a trapped rabbit beneath Bucky’s palm. 

“You feeling ok?” are the first words out of Bucky’s mouth, tumbling from his lips like falling rock, heedless of what lies below. He sounds drunk: slurred and warm and unfocused, the force of these emotions in him almost too much to contain in three words. 

“Feeling lots better,” Steve murmurs. His smile has grown, even though he’s gasping. He has one hand twisted in the collar of Bucky’s shirt, his knuckles brushing the skin of Bucky’s throat. He’s breathtaking. “Feeling better than I ever have.”

Bucky doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he tries to touch Steve’s cheek once more, and misses. He thinks he’s going to crack in two: split right down the center of his chest, so his heart is splayed open and bare for Steve to reach in and pluck out. He is floating. 

Steve sits up; it’s so much easier for him now than it was this morning. Bucky starts to feel that heady glow of relief seeping through him, and as Steve slips both elegant hands up to frame Bucky’s face, as Bucky tips forward and circles Steve’s waist with his arms, as Bucky leans in until his face is pressed against Steve’s flat stomach—Bucky cries. 

He used to hate that it was always him crying at the littlest thing, always him crying when Steve was so strong. Now, he’s too overwhelmed with the fairly even inhale and exhales he feels beneath his cheek to give a shit. 

“Honey,” Steve says again, and god, and his voice sinks down low, hovering in a place that’s warm and golden and safe, filling Bucky’s hollow bones, “You’re all wet. You’re shivering.”

Don’t care don’t care don’t care Bucky thinks, fingers flexing in the fabric of his sweaters hanging loose over Steve’s form. 

Steve laughs a little. A movement more than a sound, still wheezing slightly, and it’s this that makes Bucky pull back. He won’t be the thing that makes Steve relapse. 

“Go on,” Steve says quietly to him, his clear eyes deep and blue. He’s smiling; the shape of that expression lingers on Bucky’s mouth when Steve curls close to kiss him one more time, and Bucky’s high with it as he stumbles to their bedroom and changes faster than he’s ever done. 

When he comes back, Steve has his legs pulled up to his chest, his chin resting on his knees. He’s gazing, unfocused, at the puddle of water Bucky had left at Steve’s feet, and he’s smiling. 

Bucky loves him so much. He knows what to do. 

“Floor’s still cold,” he says as he comes around to Steve. 

Steve watches him for a moment. His cheeks flush, but it isn’t with illness. It makes Bucky’s stomach flip. 

“You gonna help me out, Barnes?” Steve asks, trying to be smart through the giddy-pink flush of his face—the flush that Bucky knows matches his own. 

“Always,” says Bucky, more tender than he can help. He bends forward and Steve clings to him again, and as they rise, Bucky kisses him first, this time. 

***

They don’t have an alarm clock and there is no sun, but Bucky wakes up anyway. 

Steve smiles at him across the pillow. When their lips meet, Bucky sighs.

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on twitter! @unicornpoe


End file.
